A new column from your favourite doom-mongers!

For a band with their heads so far up the arse of the 1970s there’s not much that Groan can claim to be the first to do. However this may well be the first time that a band has collectively written a column. Ok, the first time that a band has collectively written a column for a website. The first time that a band has collectively written a column for Leave the Hall.

As bastions of journalistic integrity, Leave the Hall gave us the following brief: “The more irreverent, the better”. It’s almost as if they think a collective of marijuana enthusiasts need encouragement to be irreverent. Fans of focussed writing, brace yourselves for disappointment.

With the four members of Groan living in four different corners of the UK, a large part of our interaction takes place online, through Facebook in our secret band-only group called “Groanings On” (What a name!). Sometimes we’ll post gig offers there to check dates with each other, sometimes we’ll post links to download newly demo’d tracks, but a lot of the time we come up with ideas for song names like “Iron Muff”, “Cosmic Shakedown (Wrong side of the Law)” or “Devil’s Hotpantz”.

This is because we love classic rock, proto-metal, and everything that they’ve given us. The more outrageous and outlandish, the better.

What’s your favourite Black Sabbath album? We’ve been compared to early Sabbath a lot, but do you know which of their albums really shakes our boots?

BORN AGAIN.

The year is 1983. There’s a Conservative government. Trade unions are kicking off. Moira Stewart looks exactly the way she looks in 2011. “YES! The new Black Sabbath album! With Ian Gillan! I can’t wait to listen! They have a song called ‘Stonehenge’ too. I bet that’s a Sabbath classic!”

Cue two minutes of the absolute worst, least atmospheric, synthesiser music you’ve ever heard. As our own Mazzereth decries: It’s a waste of a song title.

If we wrote a song called “Stonehenge”, it wouldn’t be a shitty attempt at creating atmosphere on an album. It would be about playing a gig at the ancient standing stones where a load of hot, nude ladies come and rub their boobs in our faces while their husbands (corporate bankers) have their minds expanded by seeing this to the extent that they burn all of their designer suits and sell everything they own to become gypsies. There’d probably be some really un-subtle play on words about getting stoned at Stonehenge too.

In fact, let’s make this happen. See you at Stonehenge next Saturday? Bring a woman. And a bag of stones (for the stoning).

Oh, and at Mazzereth’s insistence, we must sign off with the following: